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Politics got you down? Want to just play with a wooden train set for a while? Dr. Whoop to the rescue with Tracks! (Windows-only, sorry.) [more inside]
posted by sysinfo at 10:12 PM PST - 2 comments

Sunday evening fiction: Boys by Rick Moody. If you are/were a boy, if you know or knew a boy, you'd know all about this. "BOYS ENTER THE HOUSE, boys enter the house. Boys, and with them the ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible), enter the house. Boys, two of them, wound into hospital packaging, boys with infant-pattern baldness, slung in the arms of parents, boys dreaming of breasts, enter the house. Twin boys, kettles on the boil, boys in hideous vinyl knapsacks that young couples from Edison, NJ., wear on their shirt fronts, knapsacks coated with baby saliva and staphylococcus and milk vomit, enter the house. Two boys, one striking the other with a rubberized hot dog, enter the house... "
posted by storybored at 8:15 PM PST - 21 comments

I travel often on this road in this odd corner of rural East Tennessee, but haven't seen or heard this particular story. Thankfully, a reporter devoted several minutes to The Hawkins County Highway Hula Dancer.
posted by Mr.Pointy at 7:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Nerf John Wick [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:24 PM PST - 16 comments

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast is an epic retelling by John Zhu of the Chinese novel of the same name. 123 episodes in, it is still going strong. [more inside]
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:02 PM PST - 11 comments

After an April Fools' day post about an “Instant Chess” feature (playing with 0 seconds on the clock, essentially pre-move only), Lichess implemented “Ultrabullet” Chess: ¼ + 0 (15 seconds per player with no increment).
Watch 17-year-old International Master Andrew Tang (aka penguingim1 on lichess) play the two-hour Ultrabullet tournament (games start at about 4:50... and spoiler: he's really fast). [more inside]
posted by starman at 3:57 PM PST - 15 comments

Calvin County is Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed collaborating on a comic. Posted yesterday, with collaborating NYT article.
posted by hippybear at 3:30 PM PST - 46 comments

DOUBLE KING is a new 10-minute animation from surrealist Felix Colgrave (previewed here).
It's all about a little King who (SPOILER) wants ALL the crowns. [content: cartoon gore]
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:27 PM PST - 14 comments

Soothe your jangled nerves on a sleepy Sunday by perusing these 22 oddly satisfying pictures. More at r/oddlysatisfying.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:43 PM PST - 44 comments

the Roland founder and driving force behind the MIDI standard has passed away. [more inside]
posted by lmfsilva at 1:07 PM PST - 32 comments

Pop Artist James Rosenquist has died. Rosenquist became well known in the 1960s as a leading American Pop artist alongside contemporaries Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and other figurative artists. As with his contemporaries, Rosenquist’s background in commercial art deeply influenced his nascent fine-art career and radically changed the face of the art world and the annals of art history. Jerry Saltz eulogizes. [Previously]
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:56 AM PST - 18 comments

Meet Arron Banks, the triumphant arch-financier of the Brexit machine, his British and offshore business web, overlap with Russia, and his transatlantic alliances [Obs/Guardian]. [more inside]
posted by runcifex at 6:20 AM PST - 30 comments

Classic A.B. "Banjo" Paterson bush ballad from 1896. Text. A recitation by Barry Crocker. A renactment for a high school assignment. As portrayed in Lego. A sequel by Jack Drake. Also Vazoun Bill a bicykl by the Greenhorns. And wiki.
posted by valetta at 12:53 AM PST - 6 comments

Twenty years ago today, the first episode of Shōjo Kakumei Utena was shown on TV Tokyo. [more inside]
posted by Pendragon at 12:50 AM PST - 29 comments